Collection of Helpful Videos from WordPress.tv

There are so many web developers around the world who have been studying WordPress for years. It is a common CMS which is used for various purposes, usually blogging, but often other niches too. The educational resource WordPress.tv has some fantastic tutorials and videos which are worth your attention.

I have gone through and rounded up a collection for people who have never visited the site before. Each link below includes a small description of the video and the content which can help you with your website analysis and determine how you can best optimize your wordpress powered blog or website to its finest. I want to point out that not every video will be useful, but many include professional speakers or keynote addresses on detailed topics. I have learned tons of great information by listening to these videos and following along with similar articles online. It’s worth recommending to anybody who is interested in WordPress development should check out this brief showcase.

1. Child Theme Frameworks

This is a fairly long lecture which was released very recently in 2013. Ryan Green goes into detail about the purpose of WordPress child themes and why you may consider this approach over redesigning an existing layout. The full video ranges 40+ minutes but it is worth your attention if the topic appears lucrative.

2. Making the Leap: From Hobbyist to Professional

This video may touch on the case with a lot of developers who have been on the fence about WordPress. But the statistics don’t lie that more people are in demand for websites. There are some other CMS frameworks which are equally popula. But ultimately it will require a solid community of developers to keep everything running. I have to recommend this video for freelancers and developers who may have an interest studying WordPress as a career path.

3. Zen of WP Development

Zen of WP is fairly popular among WordPress.tv users, and for good reason. The skills presented in this talk are perfect for newbies and intermediate coders. WordPress is a very large framework which has come down quite the arduous path. Poke your head into this material if you’d like to study a bit more about how developers do their thing.

4. Truly Dynamic Sidebars

Ed Nailor covers this video feature on dynamic sidebars in your layouts. Building a theme with dynamic sidebars is not complicated, but it does require some knowledge of the WordPress core. I feel this material is covered quickly via Internet articles but you may enjoy the video presentation more.

5. Using Ajax with Plugins

This is a very big topic worthy of some coverage. Plugin developers love to customize the frontend interface using fancy jQuery/Ajax effects. I admit that plenty of my layouts follow a similar path. But if you are releasing plugins onto your websites you will need to make sure they are built properly. Check out this 40min educational video which goes into great detail about Ajax in plugin development.

6. Freelance Like a Rockstar

Talking about freelancing is a very large topic and I will admit this video goes on for a while. Drew Poland lectures on the brilliance of freelancing and how you can accomplish tasks better, faster, and more efficiently. The whole video runs about an hour long but you can take away key points watching just 15-20 minutes. I know the freelancers of the crowd will enjoy this one a bit more than typical WP devs.

7. WordPress on AWS

Content Delivery Networks are very popular among webmasters looking to increase speeds. Your landing pages can be everything and it’s crucial that your media loads quickly all across the globe. This is why developers will switch over to hosts such as Amazon Web Services for images and other digital media.

This video features Michael Bastos who goes into some great detail about getting everything configured on your own. I would definitely recommend this tutorial as an excellent step-by-step analysis of the process. Even if you are not planning to implement this CDN anytime soon, this video is a great piece worth studying if AWS holds any significance in your projects.

8. Shopping Cart Solutions

As mentioned previously there are some webmasters who look into various methods of customizing the WordPress frontend. Aside from a typical blog platform you have the ability to include ecommerce functionality, too. But there are so many different techniques to follow and not a lot of time for testing them out.

If you are stuck in this scenario I recommend listening to this helpful lecture by Reiko Beach. The whole video is about 40 minutes long and it holds very helpful information on the subject. Plus this recording was taken recently over the Summer of 2012 in Boston, Massachusetts. The content is still very relevant and pertains directly towards modern-day WordPress developers.

Final Thoughts

WordPress can be a tough cookie to break into if you are not familiar with the language. This can include theme & plugin development, or just installing customizations to your website. I hope these videos can offer a worthy collection of WordPress material getting you started on different paths of knowledge.

Educated speakers who have been using WordPress for years often have a lot of helpful ideas to share. Newcomers may learn a great deal and be able to avoid some of the common pitfalls. But we certainly haven’t covered everything on WordPress, so feel free to share any similar ideas with us in the post discussion area below.

About Jake Rocheleau

Jake is a freelance writer and web developer. He writes articles for numerous blogs on freelancing, Wordpress, CSS3, and jQuery. You can find him all throughout Google and follow his tweets @jakerocheleau.
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Colorburned is a design blog featuring some of the best design news, resources, and tutorials from around the web. Our focus here is to arm you with the tools and knowledge that you need to create better designs in less time.